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Zero-Approval Gambit / Playing With - TV Tropes.Zero Approval Gambit | Madness of a Modern Writer |
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Zero-Approval Gambit / Playing With - TV Tropes.
Zero-Approval Gambit - TV Tropes - I'm not really mad, just dedicated
OK, so you have a bunch of different factions who fight against each other all the time. Wouldn't it be so much better if they could all just get along? Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, as they all hate each other's guts.
However, it's said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hence, it follows that if you want to unite people, you must create a common enemy for them to oppose. This is not for every incidence of enemy factions teaming up against a common threat. See Enemy Mine for that. This is for cases in which a character invokes that trope , deliberately creating a common threat for the warring factions to unite against. A False Flag Operation may help do that, and it can work well when pitched to sides engaging in a Peace Conference since they've already both proved to be reasonable.
Compare Summon Bigger Fish , which usually has less altruistic intentions in mind. The threat itself is often a Sword of Damocles. A threat from another race — or the appearance of one — can summon up Species Loyalty. When the common enemy you're creating is yourself , it's a type of Zero-Approval Gambit. Community Showcase More. Follow TV Tropes.
You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account. Pixis tells him about an old story from the time before the Walls and the idea that if people had some greater threat, the wars that plagued humanity would cease. He then jokes that this doesn't seem to be true, as humanity continues to fight with each other in a barely maintained order. Eren dismisses this story as nonsense. Much, much later, Marley's leader Willy Tybur makes Eren and the other Paradis Island residents this so that Marley can gain support in their campaign to destroy the island.
It worked. And the thing that made the Titans in the first place survived. In Code Geass , Lelouch makes himself this threat, and then goes a step further by arranging his own assassination , thus creating world peace. Interestingly enough, his plan runs headlong into his sister Nunnaly's plan to do basically the same thing, albeit with the Damocles rather than herself.
It's In the Blood , it seems. Kallen in the epilogue suspects that he thought it would be easier if it involved a person rather than what was more of a weapon. In Dr. Stone , Suika thinks that Ginro's unexpected and ridiculous desire to become chief and proclaim ramen every day and a harem for every man was a way to unify the entire village against him so that Senku would be seen favorable as chief.
It's anything but. The Gundam Wing manga Battlefield of Pacifists uses a similar idea. An Anti-Villain former OZ soldier wants to inspire deep space exploration by taking a lost Mobile Doll factory and placing it at Mars, suggesting that a force that powerful would force humanity to put aside their differences and unite to deal with the common threat.
He gets killed by a Double Agent , but his actions inspire Wu Fei to become the threat that makes humanity grow, foreshadowing his actions in Endless Waltz. This is also subtly implied to be the point of Milliardo's White Fang plot in the series.
He used Lord Djibril and the rest of Blue Cosmos as his Genghis, and they played right into his hands. Of course, it helped that they were going to do it anyway of their own accord eventually, but kickstarting things allowed Durandal to better control the course of the war.
In Naruto , Sasuke wants to make himself the focus of all of the shinobi world's hatred so that they will continue to operate together instead of against each other. Alucard became a villain to unite the humans with the yokai to fight against him, so they can finally bond with each other, which was also his original goal when he was Dracula. This cross-continental journey of dhampirs escalating their attacks with their highest-ranked officer getting stronger with each death caused the nomadic half-vampire faction to group together, gain secret control of the entire world, and eventually take command of the moon's first terraformed city.
Comic Books. In an Achille Talon story, Achille finds himself becoming King of a small Ruritania-like nation so rife with internal quarrels and conspiracies that it is only one step away from civil war.
Achille manages to unite everyone against himself by announcing overly warlike laws that convince every subject to give peace a chance and embrace the rightful heir, a Hippie, as King. Camelot has an interesting version. The newly resurrected knights are not dealing well with each other, so Kai, who was always the least liked of the knights, chooses to remain in the role by acting like an asshole towards the other knights. Thus, he gives the other knights someone common to look down upon and get along with each other.
In one Future Shock , a Sioux shaman gives a magic pipe to General Custer in exchange for his own survival. Custer uses the pipe to win the Battle of Little Bighorn, which inspires all the Native Americans to unite against the white man. The last panel shows that the Natives eventually expelled all Europeans and established a confederation, with its central administration at a pan-tribal lodge called the Red House.
Judgment Day Marvel Comics sees the Eternals go after the now-immortal X-Men in the belief that their current state makes them too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Although some of the Eternals such as the Omnicidal Maniac Uranos the Undying genuinely believe the mutants must be annihilated, current Eternal leader Druig is starting the war for purely political reasons.
He was promoted to Prime Eternal after deposing Thanos, disarming Uranos's Load-Bearing Boss traps and recovering the Eternals' lost armoury , but he's well aware that he's seen as a weak leader and will only retain power by uniting his people against an external threat. In a Smurf Versus Smurf , the Smurfs end up in a civil war over the position of the word "smurf" in a sentence.
Papa Smurf swaps bodies with Gargamel in order to give them an enemy against which to unite. It works In Watchmen , the Big Bad plans to force America and Russia, two nations on the brink of nuclear war, to put aside their differences and work together by making it seem as if a massive Alien Invasion is imminent.
Whether or not it works in the long run is left up to the reader. In What If? X-Men : Cable once resurrects Apocalypse as a common threat to unite the fractious mutants.
Gambit once helps him for the same reason. They're both going to feel like idiots just before dying horribly if Pocky ever wins.
He styles himself as a messiah figure while running his powers at max, knowing the world will revolt against him but hoping that a brief taste of peace would "make them hungry for more.
In The Questionable Burdens of Leadership of a Troll Emperor , Naruto eliminates the misandry and misogyny among his budding empire by taking the biggest sources of it and putting them through boot camp. His reasons that even if they don't realize the other gender is just as capable as themselves, they'll at least be united in their hatred of the Drill Sergeant Nasty. The Ultimate Hope : The other students all think that this was Junko's plan in order to get them all to trust and bond with each other.
Junko tries to convince them otherwise, but fails miserably. Even worse for her is that the rest of the world comes to view her this way too. Films — Live-Action. In Canadian Bacon , the government of the U. When it turns out that Russia is not interested in playing along, the United States government and the media embark on a campaign to unite Americans in a hatred of Canada, of all countries.
Turns out to be a bad idea. The eponymous character of Major Payne does this to the Ragtag Band of Misfits he oversees by using himself at the person so they can bond as a unit. In Miracle this is implied to be the reason Coach Brooks is so hard on his players — if they're united against him, they "won't have time to fight each other. In Watchmen : This is the ultimate plan of Ozymandias to prevent nuclear war. He frames Dr. Manhattan for the destruction of New York City, uniting the world against a fictional super-human threat.
Bolivar Trask from X-Men: Days of Future Past believes uniting the world against mutants will create a brighter, more peaceful future.
The alliances between the three change so that one state can never become too powerful and dominate the others. This is an understanding between the three powers that's been ongoing for decades. The real objective is to provide a focus for their own citizens' hate and Patriotic Fervor — to unify them, and control them.
Thanks to doublethink, most people, apparently including the ones in charge , believe they were always at war with whomever they're at war with at the moment, so they remain passionate despite the alliances changing all the time.
The government of Oceania also uses the threat of a radical revolutionary called Goldstein who may or may not exist to justify its policing of thoughtcrime within its borders. Played with in the Belisarius Series. As they were already at war with Malwa anyway, it wasn't hard to do. Khusrau admits that if he had to, he would attack Rome his ally at the time rather than allow a civil war. But this was more convenient. Khusrau also cheerfully admits that the crusade doubles as a Uriah Gambit : not only does it unite the Persian people, it's a convenient way for the troublemakers most likely to cause a civil war to end up dead.
The Codex Alera series ends this way , with the First Lord admitting that the last Vord Queen is useful as a distant but major threat that motivates all of the four protagonist races to get along. The Trope Namer is Genghis Khan as presented in the Conqueror books, who pulls off an epic , two-way gambit. He starts off by spending the winter raiding Tartar camps so that when spring comes, all the Tartar clans unite to crush this annoyance.
He then uses the threat of the united Tartars to unite the Mongols into a single nation, with himself as khan. Discworld : Magnificent Bastard Havelock Vetinari manages to pull off an interesting variant; he knows the heads of the various guilds of Ankh-Morpork want nothing more than to see him "dancing the hemp fandango", but the only thing keeping him alive is one common enemy — an Ankh-Morpork without Vetinari.
You don't have to be the BEST patrician to succeed, just slightly better than the alternative. Prince Cadram tries the straight version in Jingo , but makes the mistake of picking Ankh-Morpork and therefore the aforementioned Vetinari as the common enemy of Klatch.
Used both intentionally and unintentionally in The Enduring Flame Trilogy. First, Bisochim convinces all the Isvaeni that war is coming and that they must retreat to a safe location to prepare for it, while his true intention is to keep them out of the conflict entirely. Next, when the confined conditions cause tensions to build between all the tribes, he sends all the young hunters out on a wild goose chase to search for a missing tribe. Unfortunately, these hunters decide that the cities to the north of the desert have already struck first in this war and that they must destroy them all before more invaders have a chance to arrive.
The ensuing conflict cements the young hunters together as one tribe. Saki 's short story "Excepting Mrs.
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